DIMW - Digital ImageMaker World

Steve Ingraham’s Point and Shoot Landscape is a new photography blog that is focused on the value of point and shoot cameras as a creative choice for photographers.

Steve has set himself an active publishing schedule and the content on the site already offers some stimulating articles on how to get the ost out of your point and shoot cameras and why to chose to use a point and shoot.

Whilst my preference is to use an SLR for various reasons, I also use point and shoot cameras frequently and see their value. In fact in many circumstances they are easier to get great images from. For example, many offer amazing macro capabilities and the live preview and tiltable LCDs of many models make low level shooting painless on the knees and back.

So Steve’s site is definitely worth a regular look.

There are times when, no matter what you do, life conspires to get in the way of photography.

We have just been through one of those for about the last six weeks. A combination of sickness and injuries, sickness of other family members and ongoing car issues that have kept us to one car have all interfered with the best of intentions to get some photography done.

Now yes, I could have found something to photograph around home when I was without a car. In fact I did, with Melbourne having some great cloud formations recently. So it is not that no photography at all has taken place. I also got out and photographed by niece’s Netball final (they won) until I was asked to stop shooting. Privacy issues are going crazy here in Australia. One official said it was fine for me to be shooting my niece but then said that because of new government regulations they were banning all photography next year. Later a second official asked me to stop because of complaints from some parents. Sadly the right to photograph in Australia is being eroded by over cautious officials and a government who needs to be seen to be proactive.

But even with some photography happening there was nothing huge from a creative perspective. But this was only in regard to photography. I made use of my periods stuck at home while my wife had our working car to do website work. I finished a website for a client and then started developing a couple of new personal ones. I documented some other stuff and put in place some new software to really help me manage our existing sites. So it has not all been unproductive. Also I got a lot of work done on my book projects.
These last weeks illustrate for me why I find it so important to have several creative outlets. It is natural to get stuck on one of these from time to time, either because the creative juices are blocked or because of life circumstances. But if you have something else to do, ideally that is in some way related, then you can at least remain creative in some way.

Recently Joe Nalven asked me to contribute some words and images to a piece on infrared photography. The resulting article, with several other IR photographer’s thoughts as well as mine, makes a good read and is a useful document. You can find it on Joe’s Digital Art Guild website.

I found an interesting blog by Eileen Fritsch is called Great Output. Eileen just posted a piece on my HP blog post.

Eileen covers photography, print and business topics and there is a lot of great content to explore.

Over on DIMi I have posted a long article discussing some of the issues with working in camera at the time of shooting compared to working later in Photoshop. I’ve also spent some time in the article examining ways to maximise the quality of the image that you get at shooting time.

The article is More on In-camera vs Post-camera Photography

As part of my testing of a Lensbaby 3G I decided (naturally for me ) to see how it worked on my infrared converted 350D. I am not aware of anyone else trying this, perhaps because the number of people with both a converted SLR and a Lensbaby is small.

How does it work? Amazingly well actually.

One resulting image is below:

I’ve setup a gallery so I can show you much more of my results:

http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/gallery/main.php/v/lensir/

Photography can be a solitary avocation, giving you time along, just you, your camera and your subject. In such a way, photography can be a highly meditative and contemplative hobby or job, depending on the type of photography you do, obviously.

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Life has been very busy recently, and my output on DIMI and here has suffered. But I’ve still been shooting.

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I just got back from a weekend at the beach and wanted to post one of the pictures I took, an IR shot with my converted 350D of the full moon over the bay at Portsea.

10 Seconds, f3.5 100ISO, 30mm focal length using a Canon 28-135 IS lens (IS off for tripod use)

My recent experiences and experimentations in photography have led me to reflect on photography as an avocation.
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